Tackling Lady Gaga’s” Telephone”, the two whirled and jumped, kicking and bucking in front of mind determine Betty Boop. Kermisha worked her faux-nailed webbed feet while sickening in her beaded purple bra, but the song’s climax saw her fall to Piggy, whose border flew as she performed a well-timed leap split. As the readers watching the video noted,” Kermisha fought tough and consumed”, but” Miss Piggy ate”.
One of the growing numbers of AI-generated Instagram and TikTok accounts features authors pitting their favorite fictional characters against one another in seasons meant to imitate the classic show, creating and producing their own queens.
In the ,”outgoingURL”:”https://www.instagram.com/horror.dragrace/”}” href=”https://www.instagram.com/horror.dragrace/” rel=”noopener” target=”_blank”>AI Horror Drag Race, personalities like Pennywise and Billy the Puppet square off against Ghostface from Scream. There’s also Great Girl’s Drag Race, which is specifically for plump characters. ( Fat Albert and Ursula from The Little Mermaid are the eventual winners. ) While ,”outgoingURL”:”https://www.instagram.com/slaydragraceai/?ref=FDFS23&hl=am-et”}” href=”https://www.instagram.com/slaydragraceai/?ref=FDFS23&hl=am-et” rel=”noopener” target=”_blank”>Slay Drag Race AI, which recently eliminated Scooby-Doo companion Shaggy and ,”outgoingURL”:”https://www.instagram.com/p/C4cVwyYxlCV/?ref=FDFS23&hl=am-et”}” href=”https://www.instagram.com/p/C4cVwyYxlCV/?ref=FDFS23&hl=am-et” rel=”noopener” target=”_blank”>Marceline from Adventure Time, is hosted by a remarkably accurate-looking Dora the Explorer, ,”outgoingURL”:”https://www.instagram.com/fantasy_dragrace_/”}” href=”https://www.instagram.com/fantasy_dragrace_/” rel=”noopener” target=”_blank”>Fantasy Drag Race‘s entire season appears to be a vague doll-like doll.
Some accounts use their customers to complete exclusive Drag Race challenges, such as Snatch Game and professional shoots, while others use their competitors ‘ street-ready everyday looks for workroom shots or interview pictures.
Additionally, they operate in a bit of a trademark grey place. Drag Race, Miss Piggy, and Pennywise all have partners. Developers behind the different accounts claim that what they’re doing is a movie, or falls under the fair use doctrine of the Copyright Act, which stipulates that” transformative” functions are protected. Beyond that, nevertheless, are concerns about whether AI should even be able to generate an picture of, for instance, Homer Simpson in a kitsched- up socialite costume. According to James Grimmelmann, a professor of digital and information law at Cornell University, a court may decide that AI models ca n’t train on copyrighted characters or produce outputs depicting them in one day.
” I believe that would be a loss to society,” Grimmelmann continues, adding that it could also be in line with the current trademark laws. ” We’re currently in a time of legal ambiguity.”
Michael, a clothing designer from Europe who runs The Official AI Drag Race account, claims he first started doing Drag Race spoofing it a few years ago after discovering Paper Drag, an online contest where contestants are given the task of creating a appearance based on a concept each week. He’d already been drawing carry art in his free period, so it seemed like a normal suit because he liked fancy costumes. A few years after, while walking his canine with his companion, the two started coming up with false move brands.
Michael claims that around 2022, he began to experiment with Craiyon, making images of queens, and started seeing more AI images online. He and his partner made the decision to use the existing simulation to determine who would be eliminated from the competition using one of the seasons they had already created to create AI images to accompany it. He posted it online and shared it with some of his friends. Now his account is one of the most popular AI drag Instas, with 13, 000 followers and counting.
In order to create his looks, Michael first creates a persona like Tina Donna, a character from Nashville that he is competing with in the current season. ” She’s the local girl who managed to get on TV”, he explains. ” She’s from a small Southern town originally and she does n’t have as much money as everyone else, but she has a winning personality”.
He draws inspiration from old, real-world Drag Race episodes to create a runway theme, creates a description of what he thinks each particular queen would wear, such as “full-body image of a plus-size]Latinx ] drag queen posing elegantly on RuPaul’s Drag Race main stage,” adds information about her dress, any accessories he wants, and what kinds of shoes he sees her wearing, and then adds details about her shoes, whether she wears shoes or He tweaks every photo that is produced, adding fresh prompts to get it where he wants to be, and ideally making the queen’s face appear at least a little close to what it had in weeks past.
” Sometimes I get the render I want the first time, but sometimes it takes me 50 times to run the same input over and over again until it produces the magic output,” Michael says. He uses descriptors to help refine the looks ‘ silhouettes and textiles, as well as the methods that are theoretically employed to create them, to create costumes that he believes are relatively realistic. ” We like it when someone is scrolling Instagram and thinks,’ Wait, what season of Drag Race is that?'” he explains.
There are still restrictions on what AI can do. Many creators take note that adding “drag queen” to Copilot almost always results in a showgirl-like, skinny, white figure with big train and legs exposed in the front. As well as applying any kind of particular makeup look, getting a plus-size queen or a queen of color can be difficult. ( This overused and painted notion of drag performers echoes how many AI tools use to create queer people. )
When creators make multiple images of the same performers—for a spliced- together lip sync clip, let’s say—the limits ( and reach ) of AI can be unintentionally hilarious. You can ask Copilot, which is a favorite of Microsoft’s AI tool, to place a queen in a number of different positions, which will result in wigs and dresses that grow bigger and bigger and bigger or that change from frame to frame.
When it comes to eliminations, every account has their own way of doing them. Michael uses the same simulator he has used since he was playing with his partner for the Official AI Drag Race, which allows for a somewhat rigid and occasionally shocking competition. Haus of Dreg’s Boopy has six of his friends judging. Shayne’s winner and loser in the HBO Drag Race is determined by the likes and interactions between their looks. You want it to appear fair, according to Shayne, so that viewers can feel like they are a part of the show’s production. ” I do n’t want it to seem manufactured, fake, or expected”.
On the other hand, the show’s existing formula is a part of what makes an AI-generated drag competition work. After 15 years on the air, hundreds of episodes, and countless international spin- offs, RuPaul’s Drag Race has developed a familiar series of beats, characters, and story points. That’s part of the reason why AI creators know that, when they’re putting together their initial lineups, they need to have comedy queens, body queens, fashion queens, BIPOC queens, and queens of size. They can also often predict who will be in it for the long haul based solely on character traits and how well they would presumably fare in each challenge or how well they would perform under the watchful eye of a judge.
What a lot of people like about the reality television program Drag Race is the high-stakes competition factor, says Más, the creator of Fantasy Drag Race. You eventually come to the conclusion that you should either anticipate that some queens will never reach the bottom or that other queens will always reach the bottom.
Fans and potential AI AI drag work because they are familiar with both the show’s language and its expectations and tropes. ” AI drag is an accumulation of all previously done concepts and ideas”, Más explains. ” That’s what makes it interesting, but also grounded in a way. The image generators are trained on web searches, photos, videos, and other sources of information that provide a comprehensive history of drag, fashion, and pop culture, creating what they call an “ensemble of queer culture”. This may be a bit hyperbolic. Considering its history, it’s almost impossible to understand the full history of drag, but Más has a point: AI has a unique ability to synthesize ideas.
” I occasionally hear hate remarks from someone who claims to be removing jobs from real drag queens,” he says. Michael, an illustrator himself, claims he is aware that” AI is coming for my job” but that his Instagram passion project is abusing people’s money. He claims that if someone is n’t going to the club and tipping a real drag queen because they saw AI Drag Race, that’s a problem with the person and not my Drag Race.
After questioning how seriously other creators were taking the entire process, Fantasy Drag Race’s Más claims she has also had scrapes with other creators in group chats. ” I’m a queer, nonbinary Mexican in upstate New York”, she explains. I wo n’t be affected by someone saying that my drag competition is n’t their cup of tea or that some of my creations are ugly. Still, she says, it’s understandable that people get emotionally attached to her work.
Unfortunately, that kind of attachment also comes with a sense of looming dread, since the whole idea of AI- generated Drag Race is a play on a big franchise. Some creators claim that what they’re doing is parody, while others say it’s “almost completely useless” ( or perhaps pointless ) copyright disclaimers absolving themselves on their main Instagram page. However, others acknowledge that they’re likely building their followings on shaky ground.
Numerous Instagram accounts have already been deleted, including one with exclusively Disney characters, giving creators who only use animated or already-existing characters a little pause. ” I’m very scared of getting taken down”, says Haus of Dreg’s Boopy. ” But if I did, then so be it. I mean, what could I even do”?
” I make sure that I do n’t do anything to sexualize the characters, and I do n’t do anything to diminish their actual tone”, Horror Drag Race‘s Shayne adds. ” I’m just blending the two mediums, drag racing and horror, into something that both groups of fans can enjoy.”
It’s not just Drag Race fans that are enjoying the AI experience, either. Mhi’ya Iman Le’Paige, a queen from season 16 of Drag Race, just wore a look down the runway that first originated in a run of AI- generated images. One of her season 16 sisters, Plane Jane, follows at least one of the AI creators.
According to Michael from The Official AI Drag Race, he has had several queens reach out to ask for their fictional creations as inspiration, with one unnamed queen from a global franchise asking him to create their entire package of runway looks based solely on his Carla Montecarlo images. Before I’m watching TV and notice something I rendered a year ago, Michael says,” I feel like it’s only a matter of time.”
